{"id":11977,"date":"2015-12-30T15:52:44","date_gmt":"2015-12-30T15:52:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=11977"},"modified":"2015-12-30T15:52:44","modified_gmt":"2015-12-30T15:52:44","slug":"why-weihnachten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=11977","title":{"rendered":"Why Weihnachten?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Have you every wondered where the German word for Christmas, <em>Weihnachten<\/em>, comes from? I have, as it is so different from words for Christmas in other European languages. So I decided to investigate.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Weihnachten<\/strong> comes from the Middle High German <em>w\u012bhenahten<\/em> \u200e(Christmas), from a dative plural <em>ze den w\u012bhen nahten<\/em> \u200e(in the holy nights). The oldest form (1170) is a singular <em>diu w\u012bhe naht<\/em> (the Holy Night). It came to refer to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day collectively somewhat later.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/Weihnachten\">Wiktionary<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/marathonsprachen.com\/christmas-vocabulary-wortschatz-zur-weihnachten\">Another source<\/a> states that <em>Weihnachten<\/em> first appeared as <em>ze w\u00eehen naht<\/em> in a song by the minstrel <a href=\"http:\/\/minstrel Spervogel\">Spervogel<\/a>, who lived in the 12th Century: <em>&#8220;Er ist gewaltic unde starc (\u2026) der <strong>ze w\u00eehen naht<\/strong> geb\u00f3rn w\u00e1rt. (\u2026) daz ist der heilige Krist, (\u2026) j\u00e2 lobt in allez, daz dir ist\u201d<\/em>. It is perhaps a translation of the Latin <em>nox sancta<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>More about German Christmas vocabulary and traditions:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/marathonsprachen.com\/christmas-vocabulary-wortschatz-zur-weihnachten\/\">http:\/\/marathonsprachen.com\/christmas-vocabulary-wortschatz-zur-weihnachten\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you every wondered where the German word for Christmas, Weihnachten, comes from? I have, as it is so different from words for Christmas in other European languages. So I decided to investigate. Weihnachten comes from the Middle High German w\u012bhenahten \u200e(Christmas), from a dative plural ze den w\u012bhen nahten \u200e(in the holy nights). The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,116,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-german","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11977\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}